Polyphonic drama by Jane Campion combines sensuality and intimacy with the big epic form and takes a critical—modern—look at Eros, power, and the war between the sexes within a typical love story of the nineteenth century.
A young woman crosses the ocean to marry a man from New Zealand, whom she has never seen before, bringing her daughter with her. She is mute and expresses herself through sign language or playing the piano she has brought with her. However, after the long and uneasy trip the musical instrument is abandoned on the beach as there is no way to deliver it inland, the future husband says. Later, one of the locals, attracted to the heroine, offers to deliver the piano himself. These events cause a competition—first implicit and then explicit—between the two men for a Victorian lady who was granted voice neither by nature, nor by the social context.
This erotic melodrama by Jane Campion won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and instantly became a classic. An unusual story of a love triangle and a unique woman’s fate is finely shown within the historical context of the relationships between men and women, colonists and aborigines. The study of power and love which attempts to break down the barriers between the possible and the desirable makes Jane Campion one of the main female voices in cinema history.
The Piano
Directed by Jane Campion
Australia, New Zealand, France, 1993. 121 min.
Palme d'or at the Festival de Cannes, three Oscar Awards». 16+
